conspiracy
of silence, an impossible thing at Rome. The loss of Livy's second
decade cannot of itself be an explanation; such an event is just what an
epitomator would have seized on, yet there is no trace of it in the
surviving epitomes, nor in any other author who may have had Livy before
him. Varro knew nothing of it, so far as we can tell; where he refers to
the Argei he makes no mention of such an astonishing origin either of
puppets or chapels. If there had been a record in the books of the
pontifices, it is impossible to imagine that he was not aware of it.

On the contrary, he quotes no official record, but a line of Ennius
which attributes the origin of the Argei to Numa:[686]

libaque fictores Argeos et tutulatos.

Now Ennius was born in 239[687] B.C., and was, therefore, living when
the whole astonishing business began. How does he come to ascribe to
Numa institutions which were to himself exactly as the building of the
Forth Bridge might be to an Edinburgh man of middle age? Why, too, if
these institutions were of such recent date, did the Romans of the last
two centuries B.C. invent all sorts of wild explanations of them, at
which Wissowa very properly scoffs? It is for him to explain why these
explanations were needed. It is inconceivable that in a large city, with
colleges of priests preserving religious traditions and formulae, all
memory of the remarkable origin of _sacella_ and puppets should have so
completely vanished as to leave room for the growth of such a crop of
explanations. These will be found in my _Roman Festivals_, p. 112, and
whoever reads them will conclude at once, I am sure, that the Romans
knew nothing at all about the true history of the Argei. We may still
class this curious ceremony with some of the primitive magical or
quasi-magical rites of the ancient settlement. We are not entitled to
cite it as an example of the growing savagery of this trying period; and
if it be argued that it is an example rather of humanity, because for
the original victims straw puppets were substituted, the answer is that
even if we were to grant the human sacrifice, the surrogation of puppets
is a most unlikely thing to have happened.[688] It is a rare practice;
Wissowa himself judiciously rejects it as an explanation of such objects
as _oscilla_ and _maniae_. You cannot adopt it when you choose, to
explain a difficulty, and then reject it when you choose. Why, one may
ask, was this humane method no